Tag Archives: furniture dimensions

Does anyone living in the London area own a cherished piece of antique or ‘classic’ furniture, willing for it to be photographed and measured in order for me to produce a complete technical drawing of it? I’m looking to record the exact dimensions and details of ‘classics’ which were common to their time so they would have to be authentic .. not repro .. but it may not matter in what condition they are, in fact this may serve as a more interesting record of how and where they ‘wear’. But also I’ve included these two examples here just to illustrate that the piece doesn’t have to be ‘mainstream antique’ or particularly valuable, as long as it has some general significance, and dating from anytime up to the 1970s.

In my article Template drawings for furniture model-making in the Methods section I make reference to a gem of a book Masterpieces of Furniture by the American architect Verna Cook Salomonsky which features a clear photo and a measured drawing for selected examples from the 16th to the 19th centuries. This was published first in 1931 and then taken up by Dover from 1953 onwards .. but as far as I know there has been nothing quite like it since!

The drawings in Salomonsky’s book are in Imperial and in any case rather difficult to read due to the book format. She also chooses not to include anything from even the early 20th century, and it may be that some of the ‘masterpieces’ are American versions of classic patterns .. which I have to check once I get my only copy of the book back! Nevertheless it’s an invaluable book, and it deserves some form of transcription into metric .. with better drawings, and covering some of the craft pieces or everyday ‘milestones’ in furniture since!

If you do have something you think would be suitable and you don’t mind my spending a few hours there recording it .. please let me know! Once the measured drawing is finished you will receive your own copy for a start. If you do get in touch via WordPress I won’t publish the post .. because you probably don’t want it advertised if you own something like an original Chippendale!